The melons have it: why the new right is built on the ruins of the old left

Italy’s first female prime minister, Georgia Meloni, caused outrage on polling day by posing suggestively with a pair of melons.  Italian feminists didn’t like her bawdy humour, even though Ms Meloni would surely qualify for Hillary Clinton's list of “gutsy women”. 

At any rate, you couldn’t imagine Benito Mussolini, the alleged ancestor of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party posing with a pair of nuts. This is a funny form of neo-fascism if that’s what it is. But Meloni isn’t so easily categorised.  And her combative, anti-woke Christian nationalism is no joke.

North, south, east and west ultra conservative parties are on the march in Europe. Meloni’s victory is only the latest shock to the social democratic self-image of the European Union. Indeed the rise of the new European right is being built on the ruins of the old internationalist centre left.

Marine Le Pen lost the recent presidential election in France, but her National Rally party established itself as a major force in the subsequent parliament elections. She isn’t going away. In Spain, Vox is cannibalising the votes of the Peoples Party and could be in a governing coalition as early as next year. The far right is already in power in Poland and Hungary under Mateusz Morawiecki and Viktor Orban respectively.

Across the supposedly left wing Nordic region, the far right is either in government or close to it. The ultra-nationalist Sweden Democrats came second in this month's Swedish election and will dominate the governing coalition in this archetypal social democratic nation. In recent years, far right parties have been in and out of government in Norway (Progress Party) and Finland (True Finns).

The Danish People’s Party may no longer be in the governing coalition in the land of Borgen, but its spirit lives on in the draconian anti immigration policies of the Social Democratic-led government of Mette Frederiksen.  They make Priti Patel’s Rwanda asylum relocation plans look almost liberal.  

As for Britain, the libertarian Conservative government of Liz Truss may not be classed as far right, but in economic and social policy she makes her Tory predecessor look almost socialist. She has rejected the liberal consensus and seems unafraid of defying even the IMF in cutting taxes taxes on the rich.

It is customary to label parties like Brothers of Italy as "far right" as distinct from conservative - the  implication being that politicians like Ms Meloni are not only hostile to immigration but to democracy itself.  But if so Europe has a problem because there is a lot of it about. Brussels has woken up and is threatening to take action against authoritarian tendencies in Hungary and Italy.  “We have the tools” says Ursula von der Leyen, the EU President. Viktor Orban says: ok, if you think you’re hard enough. 

So why this lurch to the right? Indeed does it still make sense to call it the “far” right since these militant conservatives are colonising the centre? Parties like the Sweden Democrats and the Brothers of Italy are not fascist parties, with racial supremacist ideologies seeking to extinguish democracy.  Rather, they are products of it. They are populist parties offering what used to be fairly conventional conservative values: country, religion, the heterosexual family. These are now regarded as extreme by the left and social media.

And it isn’t all about immigration.  The Syrian refugee crisis of 2015 certainly sent shockwaves throughout Europe. The right wing Alternative für Deutschland became a significant threat in Germany. Populist governments took power in Italy.  Britain voted for  Brexit shortly after.  But all the evidence is that racial antagonism and concern about immigration has been waning in recent years -  the row about the English Channel boat people aside.  

The rise of the new right is in inverse proportion to the decline of the older social democratic parties - what is sometimes called the “Pasokification” of the centre left after the collapse of the Greek socialist party. The radical left, were supposed to take over. But as Syriza, the party that initially benefited from Pasokifcation, has admitted this week, progressives have simply failed to “provide answers” to the current multi-faceted crisis of European capitalism. 

Centrist parties had not recovered from the refugee issue when the  twin crises of the pandemic and the energy shock left voters in a state of anxious confusion. Wedded to globalisation, the left especially its intellectual cadres, seemed to be less interested in the welfare of the working class than identity politics. It embraced gender ideology and evinced a cultural loathing of anything that seemed tainted with nationalism, notably Brexit.

Yet nationalism has been the pivot of European politics since the financial crash. Scotland was the canary in the coal mine here. The Scottish National Party wrecked the Scottish Labour Party in 2011 and came near to breaking up Britain in 2014. Then came Brexit which was a kind of English nationalist replay of the Scottish independence movement -  the only difference being that the English nationalists actually won in the 2016 referendum. 

The pandemic also reawakened  consciousness of borders and undermined the woolly “United Colours of Benetton” internationalism of the elites.  Border controls were reintroduced across Europe.  Supply chains were broken.  Globalisation ground to a halt.  The EU was left flat footed.  Worried citizens looked to national governments to keep them safe. 

Meanwhile Britain resorted to draconian lockdown controls effectively placing the nation under house arrest. Voters emerged blinking from the pandemic only to find themselves in a cost of living crisis and a land war in Europe.  Living standards had been static ever since the 2008-10 financial crash. Now suddenly the middle classes too face a serious threat to their material security for the first time in half a century.

As in the last century, nationalism is a predictable response to economic chaos and uncertainty. When the chips are down, and they have been for some time now, voters look to national governments for protection against the implacable forces of international capitalism just as to global pandemics. The mistake made by the old social democratic left was to succumb to the illusions of globalisation and treat the nation as redundant, backward or even inherently racist.

Globalisation hollowed out the regional economies of EU countries like Britain and Italy.  The EU’s supranational bureaucracy is resented by large numbers of disillusioned and soon-to-be impoverished members of the old middle class. Mass immigration was and is still seen as unalloyed good thing by the left even though many working class voters regard it ethnic cleansing in reverse. On top of all this, a culture war has been raging over the  biological basis of women’s identity, an issue that Georgia Meloni lost no time exploiting with her melon memes. 

The new nationalist parties like the Brothers of Italy lack coherent answers too, it has to be said, certainly in policy terms. But they do put their country first, and that's what many voters want.  Syriza went on to condemn all nationalism as “xenophobia” thus failing to understand the roots of its own progressive failure.  Nor have they fully grasped that family and community mean more than to voters than the interests, however legitimate, of cultural and racial minority groups.

Popular nationalism is the message from voters from Scotland to Sicily. It’s a message that the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has received and understood, which is probably why he will win the next UK general election.   To the dismay of the Labour left, Starmer is wrapping his party in the flag, king and country; insisting that he can make Brexit work and promising no return to free movement. Labour is the party of “sound money”. 

The Labour leader may not be posing with melons, but he is learning from Melonia. Patriotism, La Patria, is back. Get over it, as they say on Twitter.